UFV’s School of Creative Arts (SoCA) is inviting students, staff, and everyone in between to take part in the upcoming Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) Festival. The event is a series of five-minute theatrical productions from the original works of 50 international playwrights. The festival, which takes place every two years, will be held from Nov. 21- 24, and is intended to raise awareness and generate conversations about climate change. I had the opportunity to speak to the director of SoCA, Shelley Liebembuk, about the upcoming festival.
Art can be an effective way of spreading important messages and changing minds. Liebembuk hopes her work will inspire “climate optimism” and that the festival will empower people to address the subject of global warming. “I think in my experience, climate change related artworks are really impactful. Obviously they’re sobering, but they can also help us recognize the ways that we can be agents and not just feel overwhelmed by it.”
Some of the productions are the opposite of dreary story-tellings. “My students are always surprised at how many of the plays are comedies,” she said. “It’s this chance to laugh — like a deep belly laugh — about something that is quite terrifying.” Climate change can be “really overwhelming and difficult to address,” said Liebembuk. “I think what’s exciting about the opportunity to participate in the festival is that the different scripts and their different perspectives give us a first entry point to discussing climate change together.”
The CCTA invites all learning institutions to freely get involved with the newly created material. “I think what’s so amazing here,” said Liebembuk, “is that we have access to fifty short plays that are written right now, responding to conditions right now, from global perspectives.” The CCTA wants the project to be widely accessible, so it expands beyond just the theatre department. “We’ve invited all of the faculty across the School of Creative Arts to try and incorporate it into their classes in some way.” Students can read the plays that have been created for the festival and decide how best to bring the words to life; even working on “various iterations” if they choose. “There’s some Canadian playwrights there, but there’s also playwrights from everywhere, so a lot of different perspectives.”
Fortunately, students don’t have to wait to get involved with the CCTA. “We currently have copies of all our plays in both our student lounges and Buildings C and D as well, so students can read them, and if students decide that they want to do something with them, they can.” Ultimately, Liebembuk is grateful to have unfettered access to such relevant and important material addressing the climate crisis. “It’s a really wonderful gift.”
Veronica is a Staff Writer at The Cascade. She loves to travel and explore new places, no
matter how big or small. She is in her second year at UFV, pursuing the study of Creative
Writing.
